Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make his nest on high?
Near the end of the speech from the whirlwind, God asks Job whether the eagle climbs to its nesting crag on his orders. Only one answer is possible, and the real subject is not the bird but the man arguing with God.
The eagle is the last in a procession of creatures God parades before Job. Each one is chosen for a reason, and the cumulative effect is what matters.
Jehovah has shown the wonders of the lifeless creation above, beneath, and around. Now He turns to the animal kingdom. The lion, the raven, the wild goat or ibex, the wild ass, the wild ox, the ostrich, the horse, the hawk, and the eagle appear one after another. They convince the man who dares to sit in judgment on God's doings that he is ignorant and powerless.
Two things lie outside Job's power here: the eagle's flight, and the idea of a bird at all.
God tells Job to consider the eagle too. Did Job command it to rise in flight to the tremendous heights of the mountains? In fact, if man, when he was created, had never seen a bird, would it even enter his mind to create such a creature?
A high crag meant something different in a world without climbing gear.
To understand the Bible's references to things like eagles, we have to remember that these were days before modern rock-climbing equipment. In every eagle story, the idea is never far away that the eagle belongs to a region beyond the reach of all natural powers.
The questions have a purpose, and one writer states it plainly.
But what is the aim of the Lord in putting these questions? To show that God is greater than man, and to humble man. To bring Job to the true knowledge of himself that he needed, and to free him from the pride of his heart.
God could have stopped at the stars and the sea. Instead He comes down to birds and beasts, and the argument only tightens.
He does not content Himself with showing man's littleness by what is vast. He takes up what we might think are smaller things... So it matters little whether we gaze at the greatest of God's works or look into the least. Everywhere we meet what is entirely beyond man's understanding... Job had even pretended to judge God's moral depths. But he could not face what God is in the least part of His universe, and he had no adequate idea of it.
God shows Job two things held together, and He shows them in dangerous creatures as well as gentle ones.
What He dwells on are two things in particular — His supremacy, and His power joined with the most tender care. That care is not only for harmless animals such as sheep and lambs, but for lions and lionesses, which are certainly formidable. And the eagle — an object of special interest to God... Was it you, Job, who managed all these things? Was it you who cared for them all, provided for them all?
Elsewhere in the Bible, the same eagle pictures how God carries His own people.
"Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the LORD alone guided him" (Deuteronomy 32:11-12)... On the crag of rock, out of man's reach, she builds her nest and rears her young. The time comes when she would teach her young ones to gaze at the sun and soar from the rock themselves.
When the questions end, Job stops talking.
It is Jehovah-God, then, who alone orders and alone knows. His kind wisdom takes in every creature, and not least those clearly outside all the care or even the knowledge of man. Is he then to contend with God, or, if he is so presumptuous, can he pretend to instruct God? Job feels and owns his vileness; he goes no further down that road.
- Question — God points to the eagle's climb and its high nest. Job never commanded it and could not have imagined it.
- Ignorance — Creature after creature shows the man who judges God's doings that he is ignorant and powerless.
- Smallness — God argues from the least of His works as well as the greatest; man is at a loss either way.
- Care — God joins supremacy to tender care, and that care reaches creatures no human eye watches over.
- Silence — Job stops arguing, owns what he is, and goes no further — which was the aim from the start.
He inhabiteth the rock and maketh his dwelling on the point of the cliff, and the fastness
Near the end of His speech from the whirlwind, God walks Job past creature after creature he never made and cannot govern. The last of them is the eagle, whose home is a cliff edge no man can reach. If Job cannot account for where an eagle sleeps, how can he sit in judgment on the way God runs his life?
The eagle's home on the crag is one item in a much longer list. The same three facts hold at every step of it.
God speaks first about the inanimate things, the earth, sea, clouds, hail and rain. He shows three things about them. First, that He designed them; second, that He created them; and third, that He controls them. Consider the whole range of inanimate things that make up the world and the whole range of living creatures, and God commands them all. It says, "Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?" All the eagles on the earth, all moving to execute the demands of God.
The verse does not just describe an eagle's habits. It says who chose them, and what Job should have learned from that.
God exercises a watchful oversight over every creature — young or old, beast or bird, even the least familiar or the hardest to reach — with the goodness and wisdom that made them. If that is true, was it not for Job to listen and learn, instead of darkening counsel by words without knowledge? And His ways with His people are certainly far deeper than His dealings with the animal world. Yet even there we see His sovereign control everywhere. He, not man, has made them what they are, and ordered their habits and their habitations.
That same rock, out of human reach, is where the next generation is raised and taught to fly.
On the crag of rock, where no man can come, she builds her nest and rears her young. Then the time comes when she sets out to teach her young ones to gaze at the sun and to soar from the rock themselves. So she stirs up her nest and flutters over her young. The young ones must dare the open air below, and she flings them off the rock!
The stronghold is also a high perch, and God gave the bird eyes to match it. The lesson runs upward from the eagle to its Maker.
Job was to learn from this that the One who made the eagle and its penetrating eyes surely has keener eyes than the eagle. His judgments can be fully trusted.
The parade of creatures is not a display of raw force. Two things stand out in this parade of creatures, and they belong together.
What He dwells on are two things in particular — His supremacy, and His power joined with the most tender care. That care is not just for the gentle animals, such as sheep and lambs and the like, but for lions and lionesses, which are certainly very formidable. And the eagle — an object of interest to God particularly.
God's picture of a nest set safe on a rock had a sharp edge for Job. He had used the same picture of himself.
Job, though the most righteous man on earth at that time, was in danger of being puffed up as a result. He said himself, "I shall die in my nest" (Job 29:18), and it is also recorded that "he was righteous in his own eyes" (Job 32:1). In the first statement Job was in danger of putting his confidence in the wealth God had blessed him with. In the second he was sure he deserved it. But it was God and not the nest who was his safeguard, and his righteousness was according to divine estimation and not according to his own.
Why put Job through all this questioning at all?
And yet Jehovah is not seeking to crush Job, but rather to bring him to a true knowledge of himself and of God. Let him get ready for action like a man. God will not ask questions which a man cannot understand. With the belt of truth fastened on, he can answer — as indeed he does — these questions. The very fact that Jehovah speaks to Job like this shows His purposes of mercy for him.
- Commanded. The eagle flies and nests at God's word, not man's. He designed, created and still controls every creature in this chapter.
- Housed. God ordered the habits and homes of His creatures. He gave the eagle its crag, and no man can climb to it.
- Seen. God made the eagle's piercing eyes. His own sight is keener still, so His judgments can be trusted.
- Cared for. What God displays here is supremacy joined to tender care, extending to lions and eagles as much as to lambs.
- Taught. Job meant to die in his own nest. God stirred it, not to crush him, but to teach him that God, not the nest, was his safeguard.
From thence he spieth out the prey, his eyes look into the distance;
God answers Job with a long run of questions about His creatures, and the hawk and the eagle come near the end of them. Here the eagle scans for food from its high rock — so what is a hunting bird meant to teach a suffering man about God?
The verse sits inside a run of questions about the hawk and the eagle. One commentator gathers these questions around the One who gave the birds their powers:
Now He looks at the hawk, and at the eagle in particular. "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?" Who was it that gave these special powers to all these animals and birds? "Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?" (vv. 26-30).
The verse is about sight, and about what the eagle does the moment it sees.
From the highest heights the eagle observes its prey (v.29). Its amazing eyes see a small creature from the greatest distances. Then it drops like an arrow to catch its prey and carry it to its young ones in the nest.
Another writer treats this as the design of a Creator who both made the creature and directs it:
He shows three things about them. First, He designed them. Second, He created them. Third, He controls them. Consider the whole range of inanimate things that make up the world and the whole range of living creatures, and God commands them all. It says, "Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?" (Job 39:27). All the eagles on the earth, all moving to execute the demands of God.
The eagle hunts to feed its young. One commentator sets this whole part of the book under God's providing care:
In this part we move from the glories of the Creator to the wisdom and goodness of God as the One who provides. He not only planned the wonderful design of the universe. He has also filled the earth with living creatures, and they depend on Him for life and all things.
Elsewhere the same writer notes which creatures God chooses to speak about:
He dwells on two things in particular. One is His supremacy. The other is His power, joined to the most tender care — not only care for good animals, such as sheep and lambs, but for lions and lionesses, which are truly fearsome. And the eagle in particular is an object of interest to God.
The far-seeing eye also points to God's judgments. One commentator applies it to Job:
All this tells us that God has a means of carrying out His judgments, whether man understands it or not. Job was to learn from this that the One who made the eagle and its penetrating eyes, surely has eyes more keen than the eagle, and His judgments can be fully trusted.
The run of questions ends by putting one challenge to Job:
It is Jehovah-God then who alone orders and alone knows. His kind wisdom takes in every creature, and not least those that are clearly outside all the care or even the knowledge of man. Is he then to argue with God? And if he is so presumptuous, can he pretend to instruct God?
- Seen — The eagle's whole advantage is sight. From its height it marks a small creature far below, then drops on it like an arrow.
- Given — That sight was not self-taught. The bird mounts, nests, and hunts at God's command, one of many creatures He designed, made, and still directs.
- Fed — The prey it sees becomes food for its young. God's care covers lions and birds of prey, not only sheep and lambs.
- Outmatched — The Maker who gave the eagle such eyes has keener eyes still. Job can trust the judgments of the One who sees everything.
- Silenced — God alone orders and alone knows, including what lies far outside man's care or knowledge. A man who cannot command a bird cannot instruct God.
And his young ones suck up blood; and where the slain are, there is he.
Job 39 ends God's tour of the animal world with its sharpest-eyed creature: a bird that nests on a crag and finds the dead on a battlefield. Job had been arguing with God about how the world is run, and this last picture asks who designed that chain, from the nest on the rock to the blood in the young birds' beaks.
God's questions about the hawk and the eagle are not a nature lesson.
Now He looks at the hawk, and the eagle more particularly. "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?" Who was it that gave these special powers to all these animals and birds? "Does the eagle mount up at your command, and make her nest on high?"
The same writer notes that this splendid description has a purpose: it is "all for the purpose of overwhelming Job with the folly of his pretending to talk about God."
The eagle's penetrating eyes point to something greater. One writer draws the lesson Job was meant to learn.
All this tells us that God has a means of carrying out His judgments, whether man understands it or not. Job was to learn from this: the One who made the eagle and its penetrating eyes surely has eyes keener than the eagle. His judgments can be fully trusted.
The bird here may not be the lone eagle we picture today. A crowd of birds arriving at a dead body fits another bird of that region.
This is probably the bird known as the Griffon Vulture or Great Vulture... though the word may include other species. Its habits match what Scripture says about the eagle, and these birds are common in Palestine. No sooner does an animal fall than these birds gather in numbers on its carcass... The true eagle is a solitary bird, but vultures are seldom found alone... Its swiftness is proverbial, and it rests on the highest rocks.
The scene is grim: young birds lapping blood. Yet one writer sees the bird still serving God's will, and looks ahead to a final feast.
Does the eagle rise to dizzy heights at man's command, and build its nest on some high crag, from where its eye takes in the far-off prey for its helpless young? It follows that battle into which the horse has rushed, and "where the slain are, there is he." God uses these all to fulfil His will, and He sustains and cares for them. He will call them to one great feast at last, when the angel summons them: "Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings... and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great" (Revelation 19:17-18).
The picture did not stay in Job. One writer shows where the Lord used it, and what it meant for Israel.
The Lord makes some allusion to Job 39:30, though it is a proverbial expression, which one need not go far to find the meaning of. Where the carcass of Israel is, there will the judgment of God descend with the sight and speed of an eagle.
Others have read the picture differently. One writer rejects those readings and applies it to Israel.
The revolting interpretation that "the carcass" means Christ, and "the eagles" the transfigured saints, or the reverse, deserves rebuke rather than discussion... Applied to Israel, all is simple. The carcass represents the apostate part of that nation; the eagles, or vultures, are the figure of the judgments that fall upon it.
Verse 30 ends the animal survey. One writer states where the whole parade leaves Job.
So it is Jehovah-God who alone orders and alone knows. His kind wisdom takes in every creature, not least the creatures that are clearly outside all the care, or even the notice, of man. Is Job then to contend with God? Or, if he is so bold, can he pretend to instruct God?
- Creator — The question is not how the eagle behaves. It asks who gave the bird its powers, its nest on high, and its far-seeing eyes.
- Eyes — Job must reason upward from the bird's eyesight. The One who made those eyes sees further still, so His judgments can be trusted.
- Servants — Even birds feeding on the dead serve God's will. He cares for them, and He will summon them to a final feast.
- Echo — The Lord took up this line again. God's judgment falls with an eagle's sight and speed.
- Silence — The bird that sees everything leaves Job with nothing to say. He cannot contend with God, much less instruct Him.